A day after he took on his critics in a news conference diatribe, Manchester United manager Jose Mourinho took aim at his players after a lackluster performance in their 2-0 FA Cup win over Brighton and Hove Albion FC at Old Trafford in England on Saturday.
Mourinho had made little direct criticism of his team after Tuesday’s poor display in the Champions League defeat by Sevilla or on Friday when he defended his work and questioned assumptions about United’s heritage.
However, this time his anger was firmly directed at the majority of his players.
“I didn’t like the game. I think we deserved to win because I think the game was in control for the majority, we scored two and they didn’t score, but we didn’t play as I prepared the team to play,” he told BT Sport.
Mourinho singled out midfielder Nemanja Matic, who created the first goal for Romelu Lukaku and added the second himself with a late header, as one of the few players he was satisfied with.
“Many, many times Matic was an island of personality and desire and control, surrounded, not by water, but by a lack of personality, class and desire,” said the former Chelsea and Real Madrid manager.
Asked whether he had seen a positive reaction from his players after the Sevilla loss, he said: “I didn’t have the reaction from all of them. I had the reaction from some of them. And because some of them were mentally strong enough and with the football quality to play, was the reason why we won.”
Mourinho showed particular anger that his demand in training for a quicker and more incisive transition game had not been carried out in practice.
“When I spend two days working on this and then I arrive here, attacking players hiding behind defenders, not wanting the ball between the lines, defenders playing just square passes and taking 10 to 12 passes to get from one line to another line I have to feel frustrated,” he said.
“Because I think as a coach the biggest frustration is not the result because sometimes a bad result can happen,” Mourinho added.
“We prepared the team to be more aggressive, to attack the last line much more and that connection between defenders in possession and attacking players didn’t work. I want more personality in the team,” he said.
As well as Matic, Mourinho praised young midfielder Scott McTominay, although even those words were peppered with criticism of others.
“McTominay lost more passes today than in all the matches he played together, but he was a Manchester United player. And for me a Manchester United player is a player that, when he plays bad, he gives to the team,” he said.
ANFIELD BLUES: Kylian Mbappe arrived at Anfield on a run of 21 goals in 17 games, but he managed just three attempts in the match, none of them hitting the target Kylian Mbappe has been nearly unstoppable this season, but he hit a roadblock in their UEFA Champions League match at Anfield on Tuesday. For the second year running, the Real Madrid forward had a night to forget at Merseyside as Liverpool won 1-0. Mbappe looked a shadow of the player who has been tearing defenses apart all season. “We were lacking that threat in the final third,” said Madrid coach Xabi Alonso, without naming Mbappe individually. The FIFA World Cup winner for France rarely looked capable of finding a breakthrough against a Liverpool team who have been so defensively fragile for much of the
LOCAL SUCCESS: In the doubles, Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei and Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia defeated Italians Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini in straight sets Elena Rybakina on Monday punched her ticket to the WTA Finals last four with an impressive 3-6, 6-1, 6-0 victory over second seed Iga Swiatek in round-robin play in Riyadh. After cruising past Amanda Anisimova in her opener on Saturday, Rybakina claimed her second win of the week to guarantee herself top spot in the Serena Williams Group. Anisimova on Monday rallied back from a set and a break down to triumph 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 in her all-American battle with seventh seed Madison Keys, who has been eliminated from the competition. “Madi was playing so well, it was quite a battle out there,”
For almost 30 minutes, Vitomir Maricic did not take a breath. Face down in a pool, surrounded by anxious onlookers, the Croatian freediver fought spasming pain to redefine what doctors thought was possible. When he finally surfaced, he had smashed the previous Guinness World Record for the longest breath-hold underwater by nearly five minutes. However, even with the help of pure oxygen before the attempt, it had pushed him to the limit. “Everything was difficult, just overwhelming,” Maricic, 40, told reporters, reflecting on the record-breaking day on June 14. “When I dive, I completely disconnect from everything, as if I’m not even there.
An amateur soccer league organized by farmers, students and factory workers in rural China has unexpectedly drawn millions of fans and inspired big cities to form their own, raising hopes China can grow talent from the ground up and finally become a global force. The nation of 1.4 billion people has about 200 million soccer fans, more than any other country, but it has failed to build world-class teams, partly due to a top-down approach where clubs pick players from a very small pool of prescreened candidates. The professional game is marred by a history of fixed matches, corruption, and dismal performances,
RSS